"One way to illustrate your good fortune of being a holiday shopper today is to measure the cost of consumer goods by the number of hours it takes working at the average hourly wage to earn enough income to purchase typical consumer products at their retail prices, and then compare the “time cost” of goods from the past to today’s “time cost” for similar items.... consider the equipment with the “best stereo sound” that Sears had to offer in 1958, which was advertised for sale in its Christmas catalog for $84.95 (see picture above), boasting that “You’ll be amazed at...

Two hours before the National Rifle Association told the country that guns were not to blame for the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today said that “reasonable people” should be able to overcome their differences on the issue and work to craft tougher laws. Duncan, a member of Vice President Joe Biden’s new task force charged with finding solutions to America’s gun violence, said the goal should be to support “common sense” measures such as banning “assault weapons” and high-capacity ammunition, and closing gun-show loopholes in the background-check process. “Reasonable people should be...

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement in reaction to National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s press conference today: After remaining silent for an entire week following the Newtown massacre, the NRA’s first comments were to call for more guns in our schools and our society. This is both irresponsible and dangerous. No matter how much money the NRA spends or propaganda it tries to spread, one thing is clear—the NRA is not serious about confronting the epidemic of gun violence in our nation. Schools must be safe sanctuaries, not armed fortresses. Anyone who...

I was asked by the Young Adult group in my parish to address some ads on our local buses and subway trains here in Washington. The members of the Young adult group found the ads offensive and troubling, especially since they were aimed at kids. The ads are posted by the American â€śHumanistâ€ť Association (AHA) and are indeed aimed at kids and teenagers. The focus of the message is â€śKids without God: Youâ€™re not the only one.â€ť I have altered the ad at the upper right of this post to avoid listing its website but as you can see God...

"He championed the Constitution, sound money and liberty like no other "WASHINGTON – Honoring one of the most inspiring and principled political careers in contemporary American politics, culminating in an extraordinary “farewell address” upon his recent announced retirement from the House of Representatives, WND has named U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, as its “Man of the Decade.” In addition to his primary focus of keeping government within the confines of the Constitution, Paul’s legacy will prominently feature his unwavering dedication to audit – and ultimately abolish – the Federal Reserve in a decades-long effort to restore America’s economy and monetary...

The University of North Carolina-Wilmington has hired an English literature professor whose pornographic poetry verse include fantasies of sexual relations with freshmen female students, an education watchdog reported this week. In Prof. Alessandro Porco’s poem “Hot Girl-Girl Action University” the fictional university president Jill Kelly offers a welcome to the freshman class. “Who would say No to a gang-bang? Who would say No to Prof. Poon-Tang? Who would say No to my scholarly toungin’? Thank you fathers for your daughters.”

Voeltz v. Obama DISMISSED http://judicial.clerk.leon.fl.us/image_orders.asp?caseid=64293606&jiscaseid=&defseq=&chargeseq=&dktid=6821636&dktsource=CRTV From the Dismissal: This Court notes that President Obama lives in the White House. He flies on Air Force One. He has apeared before Congress, delivered States of the Union addresses, and meets with Congressional leaders on a regular bais. He has appointed countless ambassadors to represent the interests of the United States throughout the world. President Obama's recent appointment of The Honorable Mark Walker, formerly a member of this Court, has been confirmed by the United States Senates. Judge Walker has been sworn in as a United States District Court Judge and currently works...

The container carriers and port operators, represented by the U.S. Marine Alliance, want to cap the royalties at 2011 levels, saying they've morphed into a huge expense, totally unrelated to their original purpose, which hurts the industry's competitiveness as it tries to keep up with new technology. The alliance says the royalty payments now amount to a bonus averaging $15,500 annually for East Coast workers who already earn more than $50 per hour.

â€śHow could God let this happen?â€ť That was the question asked of the former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, by Fox News host Neil Cavuto in an interview following the horrific slaughter of innocent school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.Â Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, replied:We ask why thereâ€™s violence in the schools, but weâ€™ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because weâ€™ve made it a place where we do not want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability. That weâ€™re not going...

I am finally home after a day of Christmas shopping that started with purchasing a revolver and a pistol for my two daughters at Shyda's Gun Shop. My purchase actually started three weeks ago when my background check was put on hold by the State Police. There was no reason given. I've never been in trouble with the law, and I have made multiple gun purchases this past year without any problems with a background check. Yesterday, I received a call from the gun shop informing me that my background check was approved. Fortunately I had already planned to take...

Former Republican South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford plans to return to the political arena and run for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Tim Scott, who was recently appointed to fill the Senate seat being vacated by Jim DeMint.

NRA membership rolls are rising rapidly at a record-setting pace, increasing by 8,000 new NRA members per day since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. According to Fox News, both the number of individual contributions to the NRA and their average amount have risen significantly in the period following the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Unlike many who are using the school shooting as a political club, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been staying quiet out of respect for the Newtown victims. As previously reported by The Inquisitr, on Tuesday the NRA released a statement:

John O’Neill, the founder of the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the group would resurface and protest the nomination of Senator John Kerry should he be nominated as Secretary of Defense of Secretary of State...... O’Neill said that Kerry wouldn’t be suited for serving as Secretary of Defense, but would be “a much better guy at hauling up the white flag.”

Nothing says bug-eyed clerical fanaticism more than inviting a hate-spewing Saudi cleric to address your religious revival meeting. But this is part of the under-reported history of the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) Convention, a conference that Justin Trudeau, a frontrunner in Canada's Liberal Party leadership race – and son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau – will address this weekend in Toronto. It's also why moderate Muslims and non-Muslims are aghast at the prospect of Trudeau's presence legitimizing the conference and some of its notables. Although organizers pitch the gathering as "A Unique Youth Effort" "to help overcome new...

- -led opposition fighters JERUSALEM — The former director of Muslim outreach for President Obama’s 2008 campaign now is representing a charity raising money in the U.S. to fund the jihadist-tied Syrian opposition. Mazen Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, resigned from Obama’s first presidential campaign after the Wall Street Journal reported that he sat on the board of an Islamic investment group called the Allied Assets Advisors Fund. Also on the board was Jamal Said, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation, which raised millions of dollars for the Hamas terrorist organization. The Allied Assets Advisors Fund was itself a...

The Most Accurate Economist On Wall Street Sees A Big Bullish Wildcard For America Sam RoDec. 21, 2012, 2:05 PM One of the most bullish economic stories in the world has been the recent recovery of the U.S. housing market. Maury Harris, UBS's Chief U.S. Economist, is particularly optimistic considering the snapback of housing formation, which is now back above 1 million per year. We recently had lunch with Harris, who is repeatedly recognized as the most accurate economist on Wall Street and is one of Bloomberg's 50 most influential people in the world. Harris pointed to one housing market...

If I asked you to think of a murderer, what's the image that springs to mind? If you're like most people, you'll probably think of an evil psychopath, or someone bent on revenge. Perhaps you'll see a criminal mastermind, who eliminates rivals on his way to riches. Or a strung-out drug addict, who kills because she needs money to get high. All of these images have something in common: As a rule, we tend to associate murder with the behavior of individuals who behave in aberrational ways. "We think of individuals who commit homicide as being unlike the rest of...

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is criticizing the National Rifle Association's call for armed police and security volunteers to be posted at schools. He said the group's proposal "is not a plan, but a ploy to bring more guns into our neighborhoods." Menino reacted in a statement Friday after the NRA commented on last week's shooting at a Connecticut elementary school that killed 26 children and staff. The nation's largest gun-rights lobby blamed video games, movies and music videos, saying they expose children to a violent culture day in and day out. The mayor said Americans are tired of the same...

On the Faith of Mary, the Virgin Mother of Christ "Marys Faith [] Combines Complete Trust in the Lords Promises with a Certain 'Unknowing'" VATICAN CITY, DEC. 19, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today in Paul VI Hall. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, In the journey of Advent, the Virgin Mary has a special place as the one who in a unique way waited for the fulfillment of the promises of God, accepting Jesus in faith and in the flesh, the Son of God, in full obedience to the divine will....

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread ... there is no telling where it will go and...

In the rain forests of Costa Rica lives Anelosimus octavius, a species of spider that sometimes displays a strange and ghoulish habit. From time to time these spiders abandon their own webs and build radically different ones, a home not for the spider but for a parasitic wasp that has been living inside it. Then the spider dies — a zombie architect, its brain hijacked by its parasitic invader — and out of its body crawls the wasp’s larva, which has been growing inside it all this time. The current issue of the prestigious Journal of Experimental Biology is entirely...

Last year on the 50th anniversary of the creation of the contraceptive pill its inventor Carl Djerassi spoke of the coming dramatic changes to reproductive options -- of the technologies that will have just as big an impact on society in the 50 years to come. After sex without reproduction, reproduction without sex. In an article in the UK's "traditional values" tabloid, the Daily Mail, titled "A Terrifying Future for Female Fertility," Djerassi said, "There are an enormous number of well-educated, proficient women who, when facing the biological clock, first pay attention to their professional ambitions...in the next 20...

ZERVOS: The Fed Is Risking An Inflation Disaster, And There Will Only Be One Place To Hide Joe WeisenthalDecember 21,2012 Jefferies' economist David Zervos is back in a new note, which takes stock of developments at the Fed and the Bank of Japan. The Fed, of course, recently adopted Evans Rule, which indicates that tightening won't occur until unemployment gets to around 6.5%, or inflation expectations are around 2.5%. The Bank of Japan is expected to see a new round of aggressive policy, thanks to the wishes of incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. While markets seem to be pretty happy...

full title....Aptostichus barackobamai: US President gets a trapdoor spider named after him as researchers reveal 33 terrifying new speciesResearchers in America has revealed 33 new species of trapdoor spider, including Aptostichus barackobamai, named for Barack Obama. The President is believed to be a fan of Spiderman, and was earlier this week pictured in the Whitehouse playing with a young fan. The new creatures were all found in the American Southwest, and is the largest ever find in the secretive family which hides underground in specially built burrows with a silk trapdoor.

…it opens next month. It’s a propaganda film, and it’s pure BS. There is no evidence that hydraulic fracturing causes farmland to become unproductive the way it’s depicted in Promised Land. We’ve been fracking for 60 years in this country and if fracking destroyed farmland we would know about it. We don’t know that. But what we do know is that the financing of Damon’s anti-fracking propaganda film comes from the United Arab Emirates. As in, an Arab OPEC nation. Whose interests are significantly damaged by the kind of full-scale domestic U.S. oil and gas production fracking holds the key...

House Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff was shelved last night. Boehner cited failure to garner enough Republican votes for passage in the House. This was good news for the Republican Party and conservative movement, as Plan B included a major tax hike on those earning more than $1 million per year and would have shown GOP to be party of sellouts. Boehner’s allies have mislead Americans all week, claiming that Plan B would not raise taxes, rather extend the tax cuts set to expire at the start of next year. That really isn’t true at...

Elie Wiesel was 15 when the Nazis came for the 15,000 Jews of his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his mother and sister were murdered within hours, while he was put to work as a slave labourer. Eight months later, the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the survivors on a death march that ended at Buchenwald. Wiesel was one of the few still alive when the Americans arrived in April 1945.

In the same way we enjoyed the smoking scrub jay in Bernal Heights not too long ago, here's another amusing image of an animal acting like a destructive human. In this video, posted by YouTube user thedrivingdogs, you will see Porter the pup speeding across the Bay Bridge and through the streets of San Francisco. He's not just trying to teach Californians how to drive; rather the homeless dog wanted to show you how damn smart he is, giving you a good reason to head to your local SPCA and adopt homeless pups like him.

So the White House is turning its focus to a smaller package that would extend the Bush-era tax rates on income below $250,000, pause the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester and renew unemployment insurance benefits, according to senior administration officials. It would hold off a significant portion of the fiscal cliff, minimizing any economic shock in the new year. But it means a host of tax provisions would likely expire, little would be done to address the debt and deficit, and no process would be set up for overhauling the tax code next year. There would be no...

When the people sounding alarms over the ‘Islamist threat’ run into trouble with the law, the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project is increasingly the go-to funder tapped to mount defenses here and abroad. In September, Reuters revealed that the Legal Project paid legal bills for Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders. Wilders faced charges in the Netherlands for inciting hatred against Muslims in interviews, articles, and his short film, “Fitna,” which compared “Islamic ideology” to Nazism and Communism. Wilders was acquitted on all charges in June 2011. The Legal Project’s work on the case is part of its focus on what...

Today, Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry for Secretary of State, and if he's confirmed, that will leave a Massachusetts Senate seat open next year. At the same time, there just happens to be a Massachusetts Democrat going into retirement next year — former head of the Banking Committee, Barney Frank. Governor Deval Patrick has got to nominate someone to fill the seat until a special election is held next year, and Frank may be the experienced pick. Politico reports that Frank said he wouldn't rule out accepting the nomination either. “The governor ought to be free to...

While much of the nation is still struggling to emerge from a historic housing-market meltdown, the District is reliving its boom days. High rents, low interest rates, low inventory, and a flood of new residents in their 20s and 30s are making parts of the city feel like it’s 2005 again. The median home sale price in the District is up 14 percent from last year, according to RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI). And the average number of days houses spend on the market has fallen by nearly 30 percent, to 53 days.

On Wednesday the President issued a 16-page game plan aimed at strengthening the process and protection of online sharing to fight cyber attacks. It's called the the National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding. The NSISS is a guideline aimed at creating a "balance between sharing information with those who need it to keep our country safe and safeguarding it from those who would do us harm," the President wrote. "Sharing and safeguarding are often seen as mutually exclusive, in reality they are mutually reinforcing. This Strategy, therefore, emphasizes how strengthening the protection of classified and sensitive information can help...

In a breach of bedrock conservative principles, House Speaker John A. Boehner laid out a proposal Tuesday to allow tax rates to rise for Americans making more than $1 million a year. And standing side by side with Boehner as he outlined what many Republicans consider an apostasy — but what Boehner argues is the only way to spare most people from a tax increase — was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who has worked hard in recent months to play the loyal lieutenant.

After House Speaker John Boehner was unable to muster enough support for his “Plan B” proposal, the Congress has adjourned for the holidays. At this point, Republicans should stay home until the new Congress convenes in 2013. A deal like “Plan B” that raises taxes on those making over $1 million per year and offers limited spending cuts over 10 years will do nothing to solve our underlying fiscal problems.

the teen’s mother confirmed that George had bought a Santa costume, and that he had told police that he and his friends planned to dress up as Santa and his elves–and hand out candy canes. He had even alerted a teacher to his idea. Police investigated and found no cause for concern. But Crawford High School principal Mike Campbell was not convinced, saying he found the post disturbing. He had George suspended while the school investigates.

The massacre of 20 children and 7 adults at the Sandy Hook elementary school last Friday was one more in a long line of atrocious mass murders committed in the USA. By now, four days later, an official version of events has more or less solidified to explain the chain of events. The familiar 'lone gunman' narrative has once more stoked the hot-button issue of gun control and left the general population as clueless as ever as to why people suddenly 'go postal' and target the most vulnerable members of society. Teddy bears left at a memorial for the child...

There are a plethora of reasons underpinning the fact that manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the USA. Perhaps the simplest is purely economic. As McKinsey notes in a recent report, manufacturings' role in job creation shifts over time as manufacturing's share of output falls and as companies invest in technologies and process improvements that raise productivity. A critical finding is that as manufacturing's share of national output falls, so does its share of employment - following the inverted 'U' curve below. Manufacturing job losses in advanced economies have been concentrated in labor-intensive and highly tradable (read globalizable) industries...

446 school age children shot in Chicago so far this year with strongest gun laws in country – media silent The cesspool known as Chicago probably has the toughest gun laws in the country, yet despite all the shootings, murders, and bloodshed, you never hear a peep about this from the corrupt state run media. In Chicago, there have been 446 school age children shot in leftist utopia run by Rahm Emanuel and that produced Obama, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, etc. 62 school aged children have actually been killed by crazed nuts in Chicago so far this year with almost...

California's unemployment rate hit single-digits in November for the first time in almost four years, thanks in part to a holiday hiring surge by retailers. The jobless rate fell to 9.8% from 10.1% in October, according to data in an overall jobs report released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. The drop in the unemployment rate, determined in a survey of households, came even as a separate payroll survey found that employers in the state shed 3,800 jobs. “The state showed a very significant and encouraging drop in the unemployment rate,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at the Fermanian...

As rational people, we're 99.9% sure that the world's not going to end tomorrow. Still, at the back of our mind is the irrational fear that what if all those fearmongers are right, and these are our last days on earth? After someone sent us a website of Doomsday recipes that got us wondering: if these were going to be our last meals on earth, what would we eat? We briefly considered fancy tasting menus at places we've always wanted to try but now would never get a chance to, like French Laundry or Coi, but if we're honest, we...

House Speaker John Boehner signaled on Friday he's still open to negotiations with President Barack Obama on avoiding across-the-board tax increases set to hit taxpayers Jan. 1, but sounded pessimistic about reaching a grand deal with the president. "How we get there, God only knows," Boehner told a Capitol Hill news conference just hours after his rank-and-file handed him a stunning tactical defeat. The Republican leader spoke the morning after he was forced by his members to abandon legislation that would have raised taxes on incomes above $1 million. "We didn't have the votes to pass it," Boehner said glumly.

LANSING — A speaker at a union protest against right-to-work legislation said if Gov. Rick Snyder signed the bill he would get "no rest" and that protesters would be at his "daughter's soccer game." (Video below). The Rev. Charles Williams II made the comments Tuesday to loud cheers before a group of thousands of union workers. After his promises to harass Gov. Snyder, he introduced Rep. Richard Hammel, D-Mt. Morris Township, and House Minority Leader Tim Greimel, D-Auburn Hills. Williams is a Detroit-area pastor and left-wing activist. Gov. Snyder later that day signed a bill into law making Michigan a...

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” That is what House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told his fellow Republicans last night. And apparently one of the things that Boehner now knows he cannot change is the willingness of some conservatives in his caucus to compromise on anything. At 7:45 pm last night, Boehner informed his Republican colleagues that he did not have the votes necessary to pass his Plan B solution to the fiscal cliff crisis. “The House did not...

A wild car chase has resulted in a 6-mile-long crime scene. The suspect is now ‘neutralized,’ say cops. Four people died and three were injured in a shooting near Geeseytown, Pa., Friday morning. A woman and three men – including the gunman – were killed, said Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio. CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE DAILY NEWS ONLINE PETITION TO BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS.[Snip] “There is no longer a threat to residents and visitors to this area from this individual,” the agency alerted the public via Facebook. Those seeking emergency counseling regarding this incident may report to the Geeseytown...

Policy makers should focus on what might actually work to prevent massacres.(Gallup, Inc., December 18, 2012) Despite what amounts to an all-out propaganda campaign in the mainstream media calling for more gun control, the American people remain unconvinced and think there are better ways to avoid massacres like the one that happened in Newtown.A CBS News poll taken after the shootings found just 26 percent of Americans believe stricter gun laws would have done a lot to prevent the carnage. A Rasmussen poll found only 27 percent think stricter gun control would be the most effective preventive measure. Almost half...